Thanks, Terry;
It reminds me of the message Jesus was getting across when He washed the disciples' feet in John 13:12-17: "I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you."--v14,
or Matthew 23--11 The greatest among you will be your servant. 12 For those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.

Todays devotional is based on an article in Fundamentalist Journal by Cal Thomas titled "Dear God, Please Don't Let Me Be a Christian Leader!"

Cal found himself called a "Christian leader" by a leading Christian magazine and he wondered what that meant. More speaking engagements? Perhaps an appearance on a Christian talk show?
"It would certainly give me the right to start putting Scripture references under my signed name in books I have written. I would surely sign more Bibles, which I find a curious practice since I didn't write that Book."
Thomas wonders if we have reversed things. God's strength is made perfect in weakness. "In a church I once attended, there was a man of tremendous faith. His wife is an alcoholic. His daughter has psychological problems. He was often poor in health. Yet, week after week, he never complained. He always smiled and asked me how I was doing. He faithfully brought to church a young blind man who had no transportation. He always sat with the blind man, helping him sing the hymns by saying the words into his ear. That man was a 'Christian leader' if ever there was one."

Philippians 2:3-4 (KJV);
“Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory; but in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.”

Colossians 3:12-13 (KJV);
“Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, longsuffering; Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye.”

Do your best to be a TRUE ‘Christian leader’; Reach out to someone in need with a helping hand. Reach out to someone who is hurting with a word of comfort. Reach out to someone lost with the Good News that Jesus died for their sins!

BlackEagle, I once read that Humility is the most difficult part of Christianity, because as soon as you think "I have it!", you've lost it.

For today:

I have said many times that I have some problems with denominational churches, not the least of which is the list of rules which most of them adopt. Now they usually claim they are from scripture, and can usually point out a scripture verse somewhere which can be interpreted as giving them this or that rule, but very often you can read the rule, then read the scripture verse, and think “How on earth did they get THAT from THIS??” I have always preferred to get my list of rules direct from scripture, not re-written for my benefit. I have even pointed out that, in my experience, the list of rules which a church adopts is usually composed of things which the leadership of that church never had any problem with anyway!

Well, I have said that for years, but I just found out that I am not the first to say it. I read where Walter Arnold of the National Geographic said: “When people decide to take up reforming, they first find something that won't interfere with their style of living. Then, brother, can they reform!”

Jesus tells us about judgment:

Matthew 7:1-5 (KJV);
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and, behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”

At my church you won’t find a list of rules on the wall; we think the book of rules called the Bible is sufficient for our purpose, and we do our very best to apply it to ourselves first.

I hold a slightly different view on denominations, but don't want to get into a discussion on it here. A lot of denominations have gone liberal, reading into Scripture what they want it to say. The churches, independant or denominational, God blesses are the ones who, as you say, ask God what He has to say about various things and go to His Word to find out. Their attitude is the one reflected by the Berean Christians (Acts 17:10-11) or Psalm 119.

Yes indeed -
Like the "chrislam" movement, an amalgamation of Christian and Islamic beliefs.
Blasphemous, IMHO

For today:

You have heard that good things come in small packages and Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Then there is a poem based on this idea:

I find myself so very glad
The acorn becomes a tree
Because that shows
The mighty oak
Was once a nut like me.

Then there are life applications of this principle as well; In a monastery at Erfurt a studious young monk sits alone in his cell, earnestly examining an ancient record. The student is Martin Luther (not King – the OTHER Martin Luther!), and the book is the Bible. He has read many books before, but his reading has never made him wretched till now. In other books he saw other people; but in this book for the first time he saw himself. His own sin, when conscience was quickened and enlightened to discern it, became a burden heavier than he could bear. For a time he was in a morass of great darkness; but when at last he found "the righteousness which is of God by faith," he grew hopeful, happy, and strong. Here is a living seed, but it is very small: an awakened, exercised, conscientious, believing monk, is an imperceptible atom which superstitious multitudes, and power hungry rulers, and a persecuting priesthood will bury and smother, just as the heavy earth covers the microscopic mustard seed. But the living seed burst, and sprang, and pierced through all these coverings. How great it grew and how far it spread history tells today.

We have cause to thank God for the greatness of the Reformation;

And we have cause to rebuke ourselves for its smallness.

Philippians 3:9 (KJV);
“And be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith:”

chrislam sounds ominously like the "Taslan" from the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S.Lewis.

The Reformation. After it came great developments in the sciences and arts. Once man could see the world from God's point of view he could start discovering some of the secrets God had planted in creation for him to find. I like Francis Schaeffer's book and video series How Should We Then Live.

We need to see Reformation in the western world again. The major denomination churches have turned aside and they need to see again the message Martin Luther saw in God's Word.

As I consider the truly great innovators and thinkers over the centuries, it strikes me that the most noteworthy were Christians or Jews.

Do we have great thinkers and innovators today?
Yes, we do.
Like the man that invented the MRI for human diagnostic medicine.
Dr. Raymond Damadian.
He invented it.
He holds most of the patents on it.
He is a strong Christian - a fundamentalist.

But when the benefits of the MRI could no longer be ignored by the Nobel committee, they gave the prize for it to others that had done MUCH less work on this device.
The full story is here:http://www.fonar.com/nobel.htm

So, while God fearing folks are STILL the innovators in this world, they are ignored in favor of the secular.

Sorry for the rant - this is just a REAL pet peeve of mine.

Devotional for today:

When Mahmud of Ghazni invaded India, his conquering forces entered a celebrated temple to destroy it. He was entreated by the priest to spare a certain idol but refused. Instead, he rained repeated blows upon it. Suddenly the image burst open, and a stream of precious stones cascaded from its hollow interior. That is how it is for each idol that a Christian destroys in his life, he gains more than he loses! Every one that is demolished brings him new treasures of grace and removes another hindrance to his closer walk with the Lord!

Psalm 115: 3-8 (KJV);
“But our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he hath pleased.
Their idols are silver and gold, the work of men’s hands.
They have mouths, but they speak not: eyes have they, but they see not:
They have ears, but they hear not: noses have they, but they smell not:
They have hands, but they handle not: feet have they, but they walk not: neither speak they through their throat.
They that make them are like unto them; so is every one that trusteth in them.”

It should be a crime, what the Nobel committee did to Dr. Damadian, BlackEagle.
Instead, the entire thing was ignored by all but the Christian news sources.

But as Christ said - they have their reward.

For today:

Today is the first Sunday of Advent. Advent is a word meaning the coming, or the arrival of something important. The advent of television, for instance, or the advent of the computer.

In many Western Christian churches, however, it has a very specific meaning; it is a time preceding Christmas when we prepare for the appearance of the Christ. We consider Advent to begin on the fourth Sunday before Christmas, and end on Christmas Eve.

This time period is a double celebration; it is a celebration of Christs first coming in his physical birth in Bethlehem as described in the synoptic gospels, and an anticipation of the second coming of Christ the King as described in the book of Revelation.

In the marvelous mini-series Broken Trail by Walter Hill, Robert Duvall speaks on more than one burial ceremony, and includes the words: “We're all travelers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth 'til death. We travel between the eternities”

The Advent season we are entering fits precisely into this quote. You and I, all of us, are traveling though this world. We live here in a brief period between our birth and our death, in a historical period between the birth of Christ and his second coming.
We have the choice of living this brief life small, or living it large.

We can plod along from home to work, from birth to death, and pass into eternity leaving nothing of ourselves behind.

Or we can live our physical life as Christ showed us how to do. A life of service to others. A life of bringing comfort to those that are hurting. A life of support to those that are weak. I life of giving the message of hope to those that feel hopeless.

Make this Advent season a time of soul-searching for you. Seek God's will for your life, and strive to follow it.

1 Timothy 4:8 (KJV);
For bodily exercise profiteth little: but godliness is profitable unto all things, having promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come.

Everyone at work looks forward to Friday, because that means they have the weekend coming up. I commented to one of my coleagues that we spend our lives in a series of 5's and 2's...5 days at work, 2 days of weekend and life just slips by. I told him I like Psalm 90. V12 says "So teach us to number our days, That we may present to You a heart of wisdom." I sometimes say "Teach us to make our days count".

For today, I look back on one of the worlds most famous cartoonists, the late Charles Schultz. We have all found some wisdom in his Peanuts strips, and on more than one occasion, I have used one of them in a message on Sunday. There will be no more new ones for us to derive both pleasure and wisdom from, but for a while at least, we can still find one now and then that is new to US. This was a new one to me, and perhaps you have not seen it either.
There is a conversation going on between Lucy and Charlie Brown. Lucy said that life is like a deck chair. Some place it in the bow, so they can see where they are going; some place it in the stern, so they can see where they have been; and some place it in the middle, so they can see where they are at present.
Charlie Brown looked distressed and said: "I can't even get mine unfolded."

Can you relate to Charlie Brown? Do you listen to the philosophy of how other people are living their lives, and wonder what the purpose of yours is? Do you read about others’ goals and aspirations, and wonder what, exactly, YOU want to accomplish? Do you see the achievements of other people, and wonder what you are accomplishing in your life?

As with all questions concerning our lives, the answers are in the instruction book.

Acts 20:24 (GWT);
“But I don’t place any value on my own life. I want to finish the race I’m running. I want to carry out the mission I received from the Lord Jesus—the mission of testifying to the Good News of God’s kindness.”

That should be our purpose! To live for Jesus Christ, to have as a goal the furtherance of his Gospel, to reach for things OUTSIDE of ourselves! When we do this, we will find that the deck chair unfolds quite easily; that life is no longer puzzling.

For today, this is hauntingly familiar - so if I just had something like this, forgive an old man his poor record keeping between the ears!

During the Arab-Israeli war in 1967 an American reporter was flying over the Sinai desert with an Israeli officer, and they spotted some fifty thousand stranded Egyptian soldiers who obviously were dying of thirst. When the situation was reported in the newspapers, a number of world leaders and organizations tried to do something to help. But every time a plan was suggested, some military, diplomatic, or bureaucratic obstacle prevented its being carried out. By the time help came, thousands of the soldiers had died.

How equally tragic it is for churches to spin their wheels in programs and committees while thousands around them are desperately in need of the spiritual water of the Word! We now have a plan whereby government and private charities will be able to better cooperate in alleviating needs in this country, by doing away with some of the red tape interference. Some years ago, Bethany had to drop one missionary we were supporting due to a regulation of his denomination that all $ be sent to the parent body instead of the person in the field. It angers me to see the ridiculous obstacles to the work of God which are placed in the way by the world. It SICKENS me to see the obstacles which are placed there by the Church itself! When we let Churchianity get in the way of Christianity, it is time to CHANGE something!

Matt 9:36-38 (GWT);
“When he saw the crowds, he felt sorry for them. They were troubled and helpless like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is large, but the workers are few. So ask the Lord who gives this harvest to send workers to harvest his crops.””John 7:37-38 (KJV);
“In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink. He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.”